Creating colored ghosting effects in Premiere Pro

- In this movie we're going to look at howto create a ghosting effect in Premiere Pro,and we're going to add some color to the ghosted elements.So if you saw in the previous movie,we preformed a cloned tracer effecton our running greyhound here.So we're going to take the same exact subject,but this time we'll change it up and add some ghosting.So just like before, I'm going to select itand then duplicate it, but I'm just going todrag it up one level, so that's an option, dragor an alt, drag on a PC,and I'm going to go to Effects,and I want the Arithmetic effect.

Okay, and what this is is an effectthat preforms various mathematical equationson the red, green, and blue channels of our image.So I'm going to go to Effect Controlsand I need to change some things here.Right away I need to come to Operator,and this is where we're going to setthe operation that we're going to preform,and then we get to choose the values herefor the red, green, and blue channels,so that it knows how to treat each pixelin the entire image based on what I set here.

So I'm actually going to set my red value first,because I actually want a red ghosted image here.So let's bring this all the way upand I'm going to change my operator to And, okay?There are a couple that you could choose here,Max would work fine,and Multiply would work fine.All right, so I'll keep it on Multiply,but this isn't what we want,we actually need to change our blend mode.So I'm going to twirl down opacityand instead of Normal,I'm going to change this to one of the lighten blend modes,so that it will work with my operator correctly.

Now there are several that can work here,sometimes Screen works really well,so I'm going to leave it on Screen for nowand we can change it if we need to.And right now I can't see the ghosted element,because it's right on top of this lower track. All right.So I want to move it just slightly.So I'm going to go to a third parameter under Motionand I'm going to go to Positionand just move this over like so.And you can sort of see our ghosted dog right there.

Now I already see a problemin that I have this crisp line here on the edge,and that's due to my screen blend mode,so I'm going to try a different lighten blend mode.Again, this are our lighten blend modes,and I think I need to go to Lighten. All right.So now this is working,there's no long this crisp line here,but I do have my ghosted element here,maybe I don't want it over quite so much.I'll bring it a little bit closer to the actual image.

Okay, so now you can see what it's looking likeand if I want to key frame it so that it's somewhatnormal in the beginning and then eventually gets to this,I can, so I'll key frame my Position parameter.And we'll have this be normal,and then it will be normal till here,and then this is where it's goingto get to it's current state.So let's get back to this key frame,and return it to normal,and go back to this key frame,and return it to normal. Okay.

So now as we play, everything's fine, everything's fine.And then we ghost. Okay?So now let's add another color.I'm going to select this and then option, dragor alt, drag on a PC up.And, of course, this copied not only the video,but also all of the effects,and that's good in this case,because it not only copied the effects,but also my parameters, so this should be pretty easy.So I'm going to come to my Arithmeticand instead of having the red value at 255,I'm going to return that to 0,and I'm going to bring my blue value up to 255.

Okay, and you can see here that it's purpleand that's because the blue on this clipis blending with the red on this clip,and that isn't what I want,I want the blue to be beside the red.So we just come to our Position parameterand I want to make sure that I'm on this key frame,and move it over like so.Okay. And now let's play.

All right, so that is what I wantand there's a lot of options,you can tweak this however you need to, add as manylayers with as many different colors as you like.You can try out different modes with an Arithmeticand also different blend modes to get different results.If you want to nest this to clean things up,just select all of the layers and then right-click,choose Nest, and I'll call thisgreyhound_ghost1, and OK.And there we go, all right?And if you ever need to go insideand tweak any of those layers,just double-click and there they are. All right.

So that's colored ghosted images with Premiere Pro.A pretty simple effect once you get the right settings.

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Updated

10/29/2015

Released

10/1/2014

Video Post Tips Weekly provides targeted tips focusing on specific tools and techniques for platforms such as Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, and Avid Media Composer. Topics covered include mask tracking and secondary color correction. In most cases, explore the same technique in more than one type of software. Ashley Kennedy shows you the right way to approach post-production tasks, but also offers her own advice and quick-and-dirty workarounds for when you have to make edits and corrections fast.